It's been about 15 months since Extreme Networks completed the acquisition of Enterasys Networks, a move that bolstered not only Extreme's financial heft, but widened its switching line and beefed up its wireless LAN capabilities. Extreme CEO Charles Berger gave IDG US Media Chief Content Officer John Gallant an update on the progress of integrating Enterasys's technology and discussed how software-defined networking is reshaping the industry. He also discussed how Extreme's work on in-venue wireless with NFL teams and others will benefit all customers.

SAP's announcement that it will pay US$8.3 billion to buy business-travel and expense software vendor Concur might have generated less initial buzz than the companies hoped, given it was almost simultaneous with the revelation that Larry Ellison has relinquished his CEO seat to become CTO and executive chairman of Oracle.

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is the public face of the Software Defined Networking movement, spelling out requirements and defining standards. The group's board includes Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs on the data center side, and Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and NTT Communications on the service provider side. Additionally, there are close to 150 members, from global telcos to startups. To get a sense of where the movement stands, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix tracked down ONF Executive Director Dan Pitt, who spent 20 years developing network architecture, technology, standards, and products at IBM Networking Systems, Hewlett Packard and Bay Networks.

Soni Jiandani is one of Cisco's serial entrepreneurs, having been a key member of the teams that developed everything from the Nexus 5000 to Cisco's Unified Computing System (which in five years has leapt to the top of the x86 blade server market in North America, according to IDC). Today Jiandani is Senior Vice President of Cisco's Insieme business unit, the group pushing the company's Software Defined Networking vision. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught with Jiandani to get her take on how SDN plays out.

If Cumulus Networks has its way, companies will use its Cumulus Linux to decouple the network operating system from the hardware and break free of the integrated approach that has driven the industry for decades. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix talked about the vision with Co-Founder and CEO JR Rivers.

William Hanna, vice president of technical services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), went out looking for a way to add capacity to a backup network and found what he wanted in Software Defined Networking (SDN) tools from Alcatel-Lucent. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix sat down with Hanna to learn about the process and experience.

John Morgridge was Cisco's first CEO. He took the company public and presided over its growth until John Chambers took over as CEO in 1995. On the 25th anniversary of the Networker's user conference this week, Morgridge, 80, reflects on the past and looks ahead to the future as Cisco's Chairman Emeritus.

Aerohive Networks sells not just enterprise Wi-Fi gear but also cloud-based software designed to make it easier to set up and manage a customer's entire wired and wireless network. Other wireless LAN vendors are moving in the same direction, including Cisco Systems, the biggest seller of enterprise Wi-Fi, which acquired Meraki Networks in 2012.

Broadcom got a jump on Mobile World Congress this week, announcing two steps forward in its fledgling LTE silicon business. On Monday, the company introduced a turnkey solution for LTE smartphones to be priced under US$300. On Tuesday, it announced a test, on a live carrier network in Finland, of a high-end handset chip that can use so-called Category 6 LTE with speeds as high as 300Mbps (bits per second).

Gino Pokluda had a problem: The database system at Presbyterian Health Plan in Albuquerque, N.M., where Pokluda serves as manager of service improvement and innovation, was becoming increasingly expensive and unwieldy, requiring about 80TB of storage for 13 database environments. To gain control, Pokluda implemented Delphix software to enable agile data management and eliminate redundant infrastructure. The 2012 project sliced his storage needs to 35TB, even though his team now maintains 23 environments. Here Pokluda, who manages all production, test and development environments for the company, discusses the database system overhaul and shares other IT management insights.

Riverbed Technology is best known for its WAN optimization tools, but the company has branched out over the years through multiple acquisitions. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Eric Wolford, president of the company's Products Group, to see how the company is trying to help customers squeeze more efficiency out of their IT resources.

Google Enterprise is making inroads on many fronts, winning converts to everything from its productivity tools to its cloud offerings. We recently caught up with President of Google Enterprise, Amit Singh, for a progress report and to discuss what comes next.

Google, an early backer of software-defined networking and OpenFlow, shared some details at the recent Open Networking Summit about how the company is using the technology to link 12 worldwide data centers over 10G links. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Google Principal Engineer Amin Vahdat to learn more.

Running the internal IT operations of Cisco Systems is a big job not just because of the size of the company -- more than 70,000 employees worldwide and a market capitalisation in the range of $US100 billion -- but also because Cisco is continually developing new IT products across a broad range of technologies and is known for rapidly adopting those products for its own use. Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby spoke with IDG News Service on the sidelines of the NetWork conference last week and shared some insights into the legendary enterprise IT company's own enterprise IT.

Move over proprietary telephony systems. Australian engineer David Rowe started the Free Telephony Project three years ago to build an affordable IP-PABX system out of free hardware and software. That’s right, the design of the Free Telephony Project IP-PABX is open for any interested person to review and improve. With the first Free Telephony Project products now available and in use world-wide, Rowe hopes it will go along way to improving the availability of voice services in developing nations. In this edition of Open Source Identity, TechWorld interviews Rowe to uncover the burgeoning business of open product development.

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